Scrap Mechanic – Rotate With Mouse Wheel in Build Mode

Since getting the game one of the more frustrating things for me was spamming Q to rotate blocks in build mode. Here’s how to avoid that frustration by setting Mouse Wheel to rotate parts.

Rotate With Mouse Wheel

Huh?

In-game key bind is not the best and would not allow setting up certain button combos for functions. Conveniently all of the game’s key binds are stored in a text file. By modifying that file directly it is possible to set way more key combinations for different functions.

Ok, where is it?

On Windows the file in question is located at:

• C:\ Users\ [your name here] \ AppData\ Roaming\ Axolot Games\ Scrap Mechanic\ User\ User_[some number here] \ keybindings.json

It can be opened with Notepad, although formatting will be a bit jumbled so a better editor like Brackets is recommended.

It is also recommended, though not required, to make a backup copy of that file “just in case”. Since the key binds can be reset from in-game menu worst case is that everything will get reset to default.

Got it. Now what?

Now that you have infiltrated the code itself use Ctrl+F (or just, you know, look at the text…) to find these four binds:

• “NextCreateRotation”
• “PreviousCreateRotation”
• “NextMenuItem”
• “PreviousMenuItem”

And replace them and everything behind them up to the ” of the next bind with:

• “NextCreateRotation” : [ { “Alt” : true, “MS” : 1 } ],
• “PreviousCreateRotation” : [ { “Alt” : true, “MS” : -1 } ],
• “NextMenuItem” : [ { “Alt” : false, “MS” : -1 } ],
• “PreviousMenuItem” : [ { “Alt” : false, “MS” : 1 } ],

Huzzah?

Huzzah indeed! If everything is done correctly the in-game controls will show “Alt + Scroll wheel” for part rotation and just “Scroll wheel” for part selection HOWEVER there’s a bit more to it that is not shown.

The game now detects when Alt is pressed and switches the mouse wheel functionality based on that. In other words, Rotation is turned on with Alt while Selection is turned off and the other way around. Otherwise the game tries to do both and Selection overrides rotation, causing parts to change instead of rotating.